


this suffering brings me closer

by orphan_account



Category: NCIS
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Ghosts, No romo, they're chemistry was top notch but like........no romo ja feel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 21:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11722593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Ziva drops Ari, Kate follows him right out of his body.





	this suffering brings me closer

**Author's Note:**

> you’d think that after several years i would have been over kate’s death but no!!! guess fucking what wrote a kari fic cos ive been sobbing for the last 2 hrs
> 
> sorry for any typos
> 
> title taken from [sick by chelsea wolfe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCZ20lC3E0E)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Ziva drops Ari, Kate follows him right out of his body.

It’s not like it was hard to follow him—in one of those old movies Tony liked to talk about, a ghost’s profession was haunting. He’s the one who killed her, after all. There’s Ducky, Tony, McGee, Abby, Gibbs—and then there’s this son of a bitch whose got her blood on his hands, and now his is on his sister’s.

He was the first one she found when she blinked awake into this suspended half-conscious realm of the undead. She’d hovered over the shoulders of her coworkers—her friends, her _family_ —and stuck close to them, watching, silent in the echo of her ringing death, and now it was over. Ari was dead—they both were—and he’s waking up in death, just like she had.

While alive, Ari had shown no outward sign of recognizing her presence or thinking of her, except when it came to taunting Gibbs and his team—but now—now they’re standing in the middle of the basement. Ziva had followed the body out; Gibbs was working on his boat while Fornell sips from a flask; Tony and Tim are lying awake, troubled, unable to sleep while Ducky drives Abby home. It’s a lot like being in a room where everyone is giving the silent treatment—but it’s muffled, too, like there’s a translucent curtain hanging between Kate and the rest of the world.

“Serves you right,” she says, but her voice rings hollow. Ari looks at Fornell, then Gibbs, then he turns his body’s turning; his focus is not entirely on her. No Mossad, Hamas, NCIS, Gibbs—nothing but him and her in the middle of a room that might as well be empty.

“Caitlin,” he says, gentle, like he did when he first found out her name back when he held her hostage in autopsy. There’s a smile in his voice and on his face, but it’s sad.

“It’s over, Ari,” she tells him, “you lost. Just like Gibbs said you would.”

Ari doesn’t rise to the bait. He really is done, then—

“Killing Gibbs would’ve been like killing your father, is that it?”

He only shakes his head. He says her name again—like she should know better than to fool him.

She’s wearing typical NCIS crime-scene gear and he’s in black; both of them stare at one another, still, immobile, the grief in the air causing it to become almost humid in the room.

Ari glances around, meets her eyes, and starts to say, “I suppose—” but she draws her gun and shoots him once, twice, three times—empties a clip into his chest cavity with a gun that isn’t really there. Blood runs thick and cold through the fabric of his shirt; he applies pressure to one of the wounds, smiling, red in his teeth. She can’t kill him, she knows that, but this is as close as she’ll ever get to being able to ending him for all the grief he’s caused her friends since showing up in autopsy all those months ago.

“Are we even now?” he asks, flatly and unlike a question, straightening his spine. She holsters her weapon; her anger, for now, has subsided into some aggravation that only Tony could conjure up out of thin air.

“No,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him, “it’s a start.”

In the blink of an eye, Kate’s gone.

Ari quickly follows suit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
